Welcome to Week 6 of Term 2. I hope families are coping okay with the colder weather and significant illness that is around in the community. A reminder that if your child is unwell, to allow them the adequate time to recover before returning to school and if symptoms are prolonged, to seek medical advice.

STEM Expo

What an amazing STEM Expo we had last Wednesday evening. It was fantastic to see so many students and families moving around the school and engaging with all the wonderful science presentations. The Science Scavenger Hunts were very popular with several entries submitted. It was great to see families and groups of students working together to find the answers. The winners will be announced this Friday on assembly. A big thank you to all the teachers who supported students in preparing their STEM displays and for generously giving of their time to ensure the night was such a great success.

Learner Dispositions - Lennie and their Bag Pack

Lennie the Learner Disposition Lizard was very excited this week about the arrival of their new backpack. Lennie’s backpack is perfect for holding each of the five learner dispositions they use to support them with their learning.

The feedback from Lennie is that the backpack is perfect for holding the disposition tools and we’ve placed an order so that every class will have their own Lennie, backpack, and set of learner dispositions. Lennie uses their unique ability to stick to the board to support students during learning, they can help identify what learner dispositions might be necessary for a given activity. They can then reach into their backpack and display the disposition/s on the board for students to refer to throughout the lesson.

Term 2.2. Professional Learning Community (PLC) Focus

Throughout the semester I have shared with families how we use PLCs to collaborate to improve student learning. Building a PLC is a proven way for schools to increase student learning by creating a culture that is:

Focused on continuous improvement by linking the learning needs of students with the professional learning and practice of teachers.
Committed to professionalism and analysis of student data.
Fueled by collaborative expertise.

This term we are focusing on a reading PLC. Alphington prides itself on the importance and value we have of reading, and this is reflected in the consistently high results we achieve through both our school assessment practices and on NAPLAN – we regularly have over 85% of students achieving in the Strong or Exceeding bands.

Our priority during our current reading PLC is on identifying students with a specific need within the Big 6 or Science of Reading components: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

For example, the Prep team have prioritised a group of students who require additional support in segmenting and blending sounds (phonemic awareness and phonics). They have developed an explicit plan, working alongside our speech pathologist, Mary to teach sound key consonant/vowel/consonant word, with a specific focus on the short vowel sounds found in some of these words.

Our Year 4 team are using a reader’s theatre approach to develop the fluency of an identified group of students, with a goal that improving fluency will support students to develop deeper meaning and thus improve comprehension of different text types.

In week 9 teams come together and we share and celebrate the findings and outcomes of the PLC cycle. At this point we prioritised identifying key learnings that can be added to our collective understanding around the successful teaching of reading.

Bully Stoppers Program

Across the school we are continuing our use of the Bully Stoppers program to support students with understanding how to navigate and deal with challenging behaviours of incidents of conflict, and the process if these behaviours become bullying. Education around the school rights and values is a key starting point, as is understanding what constitutes bullying as opposed to unkind and disrespectful incidents.

The 3 main features of bullying are:

the misuse of power in a relationship
it is ongoing and repeated,
it involves behaviours that can cause harm.

There are four main types of bullying behaviour:

physical – examples include: hitting, pushing, shoving or intimidating or otherwise physically hurting another person, damaging or stealing their belongings. It includes threats of violence.
verbal/written – examples include: name-calling or insulting someone about an attribute, quality or personal characteristic
social (sometimes called relational or emotional bullying) – examples include: deliberately excluding someone, spreading rumours, sharing information that will have a harmful effect on the other person and/or damaging a person’s social reputation or social acceptance
cyberbullying – any form of bullying behaviour that occurs online or via a mobile device. It can be verbal or written, and can include threats of violence as well as images, videos and/or audio. For more information, refer to Cyberbullying.

District Cross Country

On Monday 13 May I was fortunate to attend the District Cross Country with our APS team. We had 54 students compete on the day across the Boys and Girls 10-, 11-, and 12-year-old age groups. The weather was fairly warm, for the 3km races with conditions for running pretty good, however it was particularly hot by the time the 2km events started.

Overall, it was an extremely successful day for APS students. We took out 3rd place overall in the girls and we placed 2nd overall in the boys. An amazing effort for a school of 350 students.

Several students finished in the top 10, ensuring they will progress to the next stage and represent APS and Ivanhoe District at the Division championships at Banyule Flats next week.

Offsite Evacuation Drill

Providing the weather is suitable, we will hold an offsite evacuation to Alphington Park next week, Thursday 30 May. As part of our annual Emergency Management Plan, we are required to conduct drills at various points throughout the year. This will be our first offsite evacuation for the year and the School Leadership Team will review the protocols and the exit points prior to the evacuation and communicate these with teachers. Teachers of Prep students will suitably prepare the younger students for their first offsite evacuation.

Have a great week everyone!

Shane Wilkie

Assistant Principal

School Fees / Excursion Levy - Reminder

Parents who have not yet paid their School Fees and/or the Excursion Levy will be receiving a reminder letter in their child's bag this week.

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